Monday, September 26, 2011

Dock 94 is alive!

Last friday during the Montreal EVE meet a few of us were discussing the possibility of joining Maulos' Quebecois only pirate corp, but the next morning somebody showed up in the EVE MTL channel that I wasn't expecting. After building a monster of a computer, my old corpmate and pupil si Gong logged back into EVE Online as we were sipping beer, trading stories, and eyeing Montreal babes. It has already been over a year since he was forced to get out (long story) and he's been busy with real life stuff so he took a lengthier break than he intended to. Now things have calmed down for him and he surprised the Hell out of me as I was having my breakfast in front of my computer screen.

Having just about 6 months of EVE experience and taking a year+ long break did have a negative effect though. Let's say he took a few hundred meter drop off the Learning Cliff and he has to get reacquainted with EVE's awesome and intuitive UI (!), so when I told him I wanted to go visit him anyway he was more than happy to have me over so I could fix the placement of his windows, set up his overview, look over his skill tree, and of course reinstall useful little apps like EVEmon and EFT (both of which he had forgotten then name of XD). Once that was done I had him get out of the NPC corp he was in and rejoin Dock 94 so he could again have access to better agents to make a bit more ISK faster.

So what did si Gong wake up to? Well first he had to customize his Jin Mei character because Incarna happened - by the way I had kept him informed about what was going on in EVE during his absence so he knew about the Jita Riots - and he walked around a bit in his closet... er, captain's quarters! He had a bit less ISK than he remembered but at least he had a good selection of ships: a Drake for missions (tank is good, needs work on missile skills), a few PvP frigs, some Thrashers with one fit for salvaging (he left before the Noctis arrived), and of course the Orca he had won in an EVE Radio contest. And we had done a good job of setting up his skills so to go with the Orca he got himself some decent industry/mining skills, but he didn't neglect his combat skills as he can now T2 fit Gallente AND Minmatar frigates (Rifter maybe?) and some time this week he will be Assault Ship capable, and when he's done with Evasive Maneuvering V Interceptors will be opened up. And all this without neglecting the all-important support skills. The only cruiser skills he has right now are mainly T1 for Gallente, Caldari and Minmatar ships, but he is very close to T2 missiles to complement the decent tank he built for the Drake. So soon he won't need my awesome fire power to deal with L4's quickly when quick ISK is needed. He will be advised not to rush for the T2 cruisers just yet, you can be sure of that!

So I may have been ready to join another corp and go full-on PewPew, but now I'll take some time to be a teacher again. I will probably have him join me on a few exploration ops as there can be much more ISK in that than just missions, plus he actually enjoys mining once in a while. But he also wants to learn The PvP so now that we're in the same corp we can shoot the crap out of each other; I expect many Rifters to die in these little experiments :)) So sorry Maulos, I will not be joining you guys in the near future. si Gong has also told me that a few of his buddies want to make the jump into New Eden so guess what, there may yet be more people to train. Oh, and no worries... podding is part of my curriculum >:)

Fly like a master; hire an apprentice

o7

PS: right-clicking the highlighted names of pilots will NOT bring up a menu XD